We gave out some candy bars for Halloween. I notice they are not
very big and are labeled by the manufacturer as being "Fun Size."
What are they, nuts? I can just imagine one of these kids coming
to the door and complaining that if I give him a full-sized candy
bar that it is too big and it spoils all the fun. [-mrl]

You know those hard-to-open bubble-packs that most small
electronics come in these days? They are the ones that you risk
cutting your own hands to get them open. Amazon has taken a stand
that they will no longer send items out in these bubble packs.
That is very courageous of them. Of course I do not suppose they
have a big shoplifting problem. [-mrl]

On our first sightseeing visit to Wyoming we passed through Johnson
County and saw a statue or a plaque commemorating the Johnson
County War. I had heard of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico.
That was the fight that made Billy the Kid and his friend and
nemesis Pat Garrett famous. The Johnson County War was at that
time new to me. I made it a point to learn some more. This year
when we visited Wyoming again we did not get to Johnson County but
we had a much better idea what was going on when history museums
showed us artifacts.

This conflict--it is also called the War on Powder River--was the
basis of at least two quite different films. One was the notorious
Hollywood flop HEAVEN'S GATE and another was a made-for-TV film
simply called THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR. Neither told the whole
interesting story, but now that I know the story I enjoyed both
films. HEAVEN'S GATE got a bum rap.

Johnson County is located in central Wyoming where there is good
grazing country with wide expanses. The conflict took place from
the 1870s and came to a head in 1892. The state had cattle barons
who grazed their animals on the wide plains, which they did not
actually own but considered were fair game for their herds. They
grew rich and money brought a great deal of political power in the
state. Their politics was very Republican.

A big problem for them as they saw it were the homesteaders who
claimed the land and set up farms, fencing off parcels of the
territory. The cattlemen saw this as a threat to their access to
water. (Think SHANE.) There were more homesteaders than
cattlemen, but the cattlemen had the money to support the
Republicans who in turn made the law favor the cattlemen. But it
was not so much that the cattlemen had everything their own way.
The cattlemen formed a private interest group, The Wyoming Stock
Growers Association, a combination of gentility and thuggery.

In 1892 things exploded into violent war near Buffalo, Wyoming.
The cattlemen confiscated a large number of homesteader cattle
claiming without proof that it had been rustled. They complained
to the government that the homesteaders were stealing the open
range cattle. There may have been some truth, but the stock
growers also probably went a bit far in their interpretation. Then
they want a lot further.

The Wyoming Stock Growers Association hired a small army of twenty-
six mercenaries, dubbed the "Invaders" or the "regulators" from
Texas to get rid of the most vociferous leaders of the
homesteaders. To them this was law and order and the law was
fairly sympathetic.

Two of the leading homesteaders Nick Ray and Nate Champion were
tracked the K C ranch and were trapped in the ranch house. This
became a siege. It should have been a simple job for the small
army to finish the two men off. It wasn't. The trapped men were
good shots and the mercenaries were not so anxious to die for their
wages and a cause that wasn't theirs. Other homesteaders went to
the law and insisted what was happening was illegal and had to be
broken up. But the corrupt authorities sided with the rich cattle
interests. They admitted they had a responsibility to stop the
carnage, but nobody said they had a responsibility to rush.
However, word had reached town that the siege was happening and the
law was foot-dragging.

With two hundred angry and armed residents the sheriff decided he
had to do something. By now someone had also contacted the
Governor. So the law finally stepped in, but not before Nick Ray
was shot to death. Nate Champion had held off regulators all day
until building he was fighting from was burned. The fire flushed
Champion from the house where he too was shot to death.

Only then did the law officials and the angry citizens and federal
troops called in by the Governor step in and arrest the Invaders.
(So ends the film THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR with a victory for the
citizenry against the cattlemen.)

But the cattle interests were too strong and the Invaders were all
released without being charged the next day. They returned to
Texas. This proved that there was no justice for the homesteader
cause in Wyoming. (So ends the film HEAVEN'S GATE with the cattle
men winning a victory over the homesteaders.)

But the Johnson County War became a major state scandal. The
political power of the cattlemen was clearly above the law and
scared a lot of people in Wyoming including a lot of voting fence
sitters. The state went Democrat in a big way. The cattle
interests lost a lot of their power. The Johnson County War became
a rallying cause for the Democrats for many years to come.

Who actually won the Johnson County War? That depends on whom you
ask. [-mrl]

(letter of comment by Rob Mitchell):

In response to Evelyn's comments on war films in the 11/21/08 issue
of the MT VOID, Rob Mitchell writes, "I assume you've seen ZULU?
One can plausibly put it in the second type rather than the first,
but I found it at least a half-step better than your categorization
of the second type." [-rlm]

Evelyn replies, "Yes, that is another good one, though obviously
with a fair amount of enhancement of the characters involved."
[-ecl]

In your letter column Dan Cox wrote, "A conference was called to
decide on a definition of a planet. (Calling groups of people
together to decide unknown questions is a practice that goes back
at least to the Council of Nicea, and probably much further.)"

I remember fondly a cartoon in "Datamation" some decades ago, in
which a band of cavemen stood around a fire, clad in skins and
carrying clubs. The caption recorded their leader's words: "Now
that we've learned how to talk, let's have a conference." [-fl]

In response to Mark's review of THE MAN FROM EARTH in the 09/19/08
issue of the MT VOID, George MacLachlan writes, "I've been catching
up on my MT VOID reading and came across your review of THE MAN
FROM EARTH. This was a very thought provoking film and I enjoyed
it very much. Thank you for putting on the radar. I appreciate
you bringing films like this to our attention in the MT VOID.
Otherwise, I don't think I would have ever known about this gem and
it would be a shame to have missed out on it." [-gfm]

And Richie Bielak writes, "On Mark's recommendation I watched "The
Men from Earth" and I agree with wholeheartedly with his
recommendation. It's a really great movie. If you have Netflix you
can watch it online...." "[-rb]

DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS by Jose Saramago (translated by Margaret
Jull Costa) (ISBN-13 978-0-15-101274-9 ISBN-10 0-15-101274-1) is a
straightforward fantasy novel, written by a major author and
published by a major publisher, yet it has received surprisingly
little coverage by reviewers of fantasy novels. (A review at
sfgate.com seemed promising, but it turned out to be the "San
Francisco Chronicle" website.) The reason seems to be that the
author is too major--Saramago has did win the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1998. Either the reviewers figure that people will
hear of this book a lot elsewhere, or that it is somehow above
being reviewed by "mere" genre reviewers. Neither seemed to affect
them in the case of Philip Roth's THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA. though,
so I am confused. (And there was a review of Saramago's science
fiction novel BLINDNESS in "Locus", back in 1999.)

The premise is certainly not new--it is basically "Death Takes a
Holiday". In a small country somewhere (it feels like South
America, though I cannot pin down why), on the stroke of midnight
on New Year's Eve, death ceases. Well, to be more precise, human
death ceases--all the other animals and plants seem to be dying in
normal numbers. At first, people are overjoyed, but soon the
consequences become more obvious and what had seemed a blessing
becomes a curse. The Church, the undertakers, and the insurance
companies see the negative aspects first, followed by hospitals and
nursing homes. Halfway through the novel, death (who insists on a
lower-case "d") takes a slightly different approach, which I will
not reveal. I will say that the second half is weaker than the
first.

Saramago is not an easy author to read. Thank goodness the book is
short (238 pages), because the sentences are very long and complex.
The second sentence of the novel (for example) is 91 words long,
with fifteen commas. And I suppose one might observe that some of
the consequences will be obvious to readers familiar with fantasy.
But Saramago covers much more than the obvious. For one thing,
there is a long dialogue about its effect on religion, a topic
carefully avoided in earlier genre treatments of the same premise.
And there are other topics, such as a discourse on how the initial
display of the country's flag by a few people who used it as a
symbol of gratitude for (one supposes) Divine pleasure with the
country turned into an effectively compulsory requirement: "Anyone
who doesn't hang our nation's immortal flag from the window of
their house doesn't deserve to live. Anyone not displaying the
national flag has sold out to death." (Sound familiar? I can
remember shortly after 09/11 someone asking us why we weren't
flying a flag in front of our house, as if that were some sort of
requirement, like keeping your lawn mowed.)

In spite of the "run-on" sentences, this is clearly a book worth
reading, and I suspect will probably be better than the Hugo
nominees, yet it is so off-the-radar of most fans that its chance
of being on the ballot are vanishingly small. [-ecl]

Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quote of the Week:
My father says that almost the whole world is
asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see.
Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few
people are awake and they live in a state of
constant total amazement.
-- JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO